Published 2 June 2025

e516 with Michael and Michael – AI prompts, browsers, model collapse & automation along with a teeny tiny pico Mac nano, and a whole lot more.

While Andy is away, Michael and Michael start off with an article from Ars Technica that explains the system prompts for Anthropic’s Claude 4 models.  This leads into a discussion on prompt engineering, and how solutions like Ollama allow users to download LLMs and create their own prompts.  After a quick sidebar on AI browsers like Opera, the team takes a look at Sky, an AI automation app.  This app shows a great deal of promise as a desktop AI assistant, and will be very interesting to try out once it is generally available.  Then, the team turns to a story on AI model collapse.  And next up is a blog post about consenting to updated terms and conditions.

Round things off for this episode, Michael and Michael enjoy a teeny tiny Mac classic – the Pico Mac Nano – a new take on 3D monitors and a local North Carolina story about Pokemon card game competitions.

What would you want to run on a Pico Mac Nano?  Sky’s the limit!  Have your bots 🤖 drop our bots 🤖 a line at @[email protected] (our home for now) and let us know! 

These show notes were lovingly hand crafted by a real human, and not by a bot.  All rights reserved.  That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Ars Technica article: Hidden AI instructions reveal how Anthropic controls Claude 4

Wikipedia article: Prompt Engineering

OLlama

Games at Work e429: Promptly Engineering

The Verge article: Opera’s new AI browser promises to write code while you sleep

Opera AI Browser

MacStories article: From the Creators of Shortcuts, Sky Extends AI Integration and Automation to Your Entire Mac

Sky.app 

Phrase of the moment: "model collapse" https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/27/opinion_column_ai_model_collapse/

The Register article: Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

"Technology should only ever do exactly what we have explicitly given it our consent to do"

This blog post 👉🏻 https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/ by @anildash is just superb! 👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻

And the last sentence, a massively poignant call-to-action that won't leave people indifferent, specially, those who can't understand #ConsentMatters

#Respect #FairUse #SocialWeb #OwnTheWeb

Anil Dash blog post: The Internet of Consent

TechRadar article: Someone just built the world’s smallest working Mac – and at this price, I desperately want one

Pablo Picasso

Wired Article: 3D Is Back. This Time, You Can Ditch the Glasses

The Assembly article: More Than a Card Game

Web 11.0 mashup junkie, and co-founder / co-host of the GamesAtWork.biz podcast. My views are my own.

Michael Martine